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Saturday, September 5, 2009

I am generally quite unpersuaded by affirmations about the character-building aspects of youthful athletic training - when the heart is strongest and the benefits of effort easiest to measure. But I took to heart the eulogy of Ted Kennedy, Jr. (see here), who said in its most striking passage:

"During the summer months, when I was growing up, my father would arrive late in the afternoon from Washington on Fridays and as soon as he got to Cape Cod he would want to go straight out and practice sailing maneuvers on the Victura in anticipation of that weekend's races. And we'd be out late and the sun would be setting and family dinner would be getting cold and we'd still be out there practicing our jibes and our spinnaker sets long after everyone else had gone ashore.

Well, one night, not another boat in sight on the summer sea and I asked him, 'Why are we always the last ones on the water?'

'Teddy,' he said, 'You see, most of the other sailors that we race against are smarter and more talented than we are, but the reason that we are going to win is that we will work harder than them and we will be better prepared.' And he just wasn't talking about boating. My father admired perseverance. My father believed that to do a job effectively required a tremendous amount of time and effort."

At the heart of the book are Jesuit labor priest Pete Corridan and the filmmaker Bud Schulberg, who saw in Corridan a spiritual mentor. Karl Malden's character in the legendary film is based on Corridan. For a video interview with Fisher and some glimpses of the waterfront as it used to be go to the book website.